International law firm Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) has today (25 March 2015) announced the appointment of Martin Sandler as a Partner in its Litigation and Dispute Resolution (LDR) team. He will work in the Financial Services Regulatory team and will report into Sidney Myers, Head of Financial Regulation.

Martin will join BLP on 30 March 2015 from Bird & Bird LLP, where he has been a Partner in its Financial Services Group since January 2013.

Martin advises on financial services law and regulation and his experience covers a wide array of advisory matters, structures and transactions for clients including investment banks, hedge funds, private equity funds and pension funds. Martin has a particular background and expertise in trading and markets, having spent 10 years as a lawyer on the Bank of America Merrill Lynch trading floor and has been head of UK legal and counsel at NYSE Euronext.

BLP’s LDR practice works with clients ranging from the world’s leading investment banks and FTSE 100 companies, to governments and high profile individuals. With a practice of over 175 lawyers, it also benefits from the flexibility of BLP’s international network. The team was recently awarded Most Innovative Law Firm in Client Service by the Financial Times Innovative Lawyers 2014 for Integrated Dispute Resolution.

Jonathan Sacher, Head of LDR, BLP, said: “There is a clear market opportunity to create an internationally-connected financial services regulatory offering to assist clients in navigating the global regulatory reform and structural market changes we are currently seeing. Martin will play a key role in this and help us broaden the scope of our capabilities in this field. His sector experience and reputation will be invaluable in helping us capitalise on opportunities to advise financial services clients on global regulatory risk.”

Martin Sandler added: “This move to BLP will allow me to play a major role in further advancing an already market-leading regulatory offering here at the firm. I will look to use my experience and contacts to help strengthen relationships with banks, investment banks, market participants and intermediaries, market infrastructure providers and other financial institutions both here in the UK and internationally as well.”

This announcement follows that of other recent appointments including the lateral hire of a team of three partners (Glenn Haley, Ilan Freiman and Geoff Shaw) and six lawyers in Hong Kong from Haley & Co, an independent, boutique law firm specialising in major projects, construction and arbitration. Additionally, Scott Antel joined from DLA Piper as a Real Estate Partner into BLP’s Abu Dhabi office, Caroline Walker as a Partner into Real Estate in the UK, Daniyal Ansari from Eversheds as a Partner in the Firm’s Real Estate Finance Group and Bob Charlton, who also joined from DLA Piper, as Head of Asia and Managing Partner of BLP’s Hong Kong office. The firm also appointed Ben Taylor as Associate Director in February.